


Letters to Richie

by wolvenkings



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Closure, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 20:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12261897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolvenkings/pseuds/wolvenkings
Summary: There's something inside of me that's wrong,the scratchy script confessed.Only, it doesn't feel wrong. Am I sick, Richie?The page was littered with furious strokes of ballpoint where thoughts had been destroyed and rewritten over and over again and faded and blurred in places by long fallen tears.Does loving you make me sick?





	1. Richie Receives a Package

Of course Eddie married his fucking mom. When Myra Kaspbrak opened the door Richie had thought he was looking at the ghost of Sonia but no, she was dead, long dead and now so was Eddie. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to find, he realized, now that he was there. He hadn’t wanted her to find out that her husband was dead through a phone call, he knew that much and for some shitbrained reason he thought he was the one to tell her. Maybe he had expected that they could grieve together. Afterall, he had loved Eddie too.

She was kind enough. She invited him inside to get out of the rain, insisted that he would catch a chill, and Richie almost laughed but it would have been a miserable excuse of a sound. Poor Eddie, he never escaped his childhood, he realized, and now he never would. Richie almost turned around and went back. It was raining and the sewers would be swollen with runoff and who knew where Eddie would end up, but he didn’t. He didn’t move. He stood there in the sterile box, a damned nice box at that, that had been Eddie’s home and he looked at the sniffling ghost that had been Eddie’s wife and he cleared his throat.  
He didn’t remember, after the fact, introducing himself. He didn’t remember telling Myra that she was a widow, that Eddie wasn’t coming home but he did remember the screaming.

“I knew it,” she wailed, tears spilling like the rain down her red face, “I knew that if he left something terrible would happen!”  
She clawed at her face and howled and threw something that Richie vaguely remembered as being an umbrella pot, but honestly it could have just been a vase, at Richie’s head and shrieked at him to leave, to go, just go, Eddie’s dead, Eddie’s dead, sweet Eddie’s gone, I knew it would happen, I knew it, I knew it, you took him and he’s never coming back, go, go, GO.  
She was still shrieking when the door slammed shut behind him. It wasn’t until the cold rain mixed with the warmth of his tears that he realized he had been crying. He turned and gave the house one last look, and then he went.

For months after that he dreamt of Myra’s shrieks, of sewers, of rain. He avoided the phone and hated himself because he knew that wasn’t fair. They were his friends, and Eddie’s friends too, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t talk, not right now.  
They just left him there. It was wet and dark and they left him and Richie couldn’t answer the phone.

He began hating the dark too. It was well past three in the morning when the doorbell rang but it may have well been three pm for all of the lights he had on in his apartment.  
He jumped at the sudden sound, cursed himself for it -seriously, what could possibly hurt him now that that thing was dead?- and went to the door.

It was just a delivery man, non descript, bored, and holding out a clipboard.  
“Richard Tozier?”  
“That’ll be me, dahlin’,” he purred, reverting, for some reason, to Bufford Kissdrivel and his southern drawl.  
The delivery man wasn’t impressed. He sighed and clicked a pin and handed it to Richie. “Sign here, please.”  
“What’s this?” Richie ask but signed anyway. Maybe it was a million dollars. Maybe it was a bomb. He’d have been content with either.  
“It’s a box,” the delivery man said as he handed it none too gently to Richie and disappeared down the hall.  
“Y’all come back now, ya here?!” Richie drawled after him, moreso out of spite than anything else, before he turned his attention back to the box.  
It was addressed to Richard Tozier, stamped with a bold red OVERNIGHT DELIVERY, and signed from Myra Kaspbrak.

I begged him, he heard her shriek, I begged him to stay and he went, he went anyway and he died! My Eddie!  
I know, he wanted to scream back at her, I know he’d dead. I watched him die. I left him there. It’s my fault that he never came back.  
He felt his knees go and found himself sitting in the hallway, half past three in the morning, and cradling the box like it was Eddie breathing his last.  
Maybe it was a bomb, he thought, maybe Myra had overnighted her vengeance, but no. He knew better.

Gingerly, he fingered the corner before he grew impatient and ripped it open. Out toppled a bundle of letters, tied neatly, and a single loose letter addressed to him. He didn’t recognize the writing and knew it was hers, knew that it contained a more silent sort of panic, but he opened it anyway. There were only two lines, written neatly and kept short.  
_  
I’ve been sorting through my Eddie’s things. I think he’d want you to have these._

Richie swallowed hard and reached for the bundled letters. Each one was worn with age around the edges, addressed to him in shitty handwriting that only improved slightly as he thumbed through them. The envelopes had been torn open and he had the sudden realization that Eddie’s widow had ripped them all open and stolen words meant for him and only him, but he couldn’t blame her. He’d have probably done the same.

He rested his head against the door and briefly considered going inside. He wasn’t ready for this, he knew it. There were dozens of letters, who could say when they had been written? He imagined the summer after he had moved, Eddie sitting at his worn kitchen table and writing to him, God knows he had done the same when his parents had dragged him out of Derry not long after that bloody summer.  
It was a stagnant thought, a reminder that none of these letters had ever been sent and now they never would.

He’s gone! My Eddie!

He’s gone, he thought, he’s gone and in the dark and he’ll never get to read the letters that I didn’t send.

Just one letter, he told himself, just one. For now, and then I’ll go inside and I’ll get some sleep.  
He gently tugged the folded scrap of paper out of its torn red envelope and unfolded it. He almost smiled. Eddie’s handwriting was shit.  
  
_You know, you’ve got some real fucking nerve._  
 _You never even stayed at home anyway, you asshole._  
 _You could have just stayed here. Stan’s got an extra room. I mean, he’d probably smother you in the night and you’d deserve it but you could have stayed there. You could have shared my room. We could have gotten bunk beds. Well, mom probably let us do that. Someone could fall. Whatever. Bill has room at his house. Mike has room._  
 _I’m so mad at you. You suck._  
 _I’m not mad._  
 _I miss you. You’re my bestfriend._  
 _No. No, I lied. I’m mad at you and you suck._  
 _Asshole._  
 _Love,_  
 _Eddie._

A post script was scratched out at the bottom, but Richie could tell that it had once said _I hope wherever you end up sucks_ but there was a note beneath it that read _I didn’t mean that._

He laughed, a miserable wet sound, and he wiped his eyes before his tears could fall and ruin the ink that read like Eddie’s gripy little voice and for a moment he felt closer to him, closer to the Eddie he wanted to remember, not the Eddie that had bled and died and been lost to the dripping cold sewers.  
One more, he thought. Just one more, and then I’ll go inside.


	2. Richard Tozier takes (another) powder

_I hate when you call me Eds. Or Eddie Spaghetti. Or Spaghetti man. God, Richie, you’re real original, you know that? Eddie Spaghetti. I hate it. But I miss it._  
_Our group is shrinking. Bev’s gone. You’re gone. Ben’s moving soon. Bill’s like a ghost. I thought he’d be better, you know? That was dumb, though. I don’t think he’ll ever be better, not really, not after what happened to Georgie. I’d never tell anyone this, but if anyone needs to leave Derry it’s him. I’d want to be gone. I mean, I don’t have a little brother, but you know what I mean. What if it was you? I’d never walk past the arcade again._  
 _Where’d you go, Trashmouth? Wherever you are I hope you know that I’m still mad at you._  
 _Love,_  
 _Eds._  
 _Know what? No. I fucking hate that._  
 _Eddie. My name is Eddie. I hate it when you call me Eds._

 

 

 

Any progress that Richie had fooled himself into thinking that he’d made went right down the drain, swirling and slurping down into the sewers with the rest of him. He’d told himself that he was fine, sometimes he even believed it. It was easiest when he was at work, on the air. If he was Richie Records or Buford Kissdrivel or Kinky Briefcase then he didn’t have to be Richie Tozier, Richie that had moved and forgotten everyone and everything, Richie that still felt a clammy hand on his cheek and warm blood on his hands, Richie that ran.

Of course he’d fallen apart when he arrived back in Beverly Hills. He spent a week or so blackout drunk, alternating between screaming himself hoarse and silently staring at the walls of his suddenly too-large home. He’d been so proud of that house once. His mom always liked to tell him he’d never amount to anything if he kept running his mouth, well who’s laughing now, ma?! Still running my mouth and getting paid to do it! He’d loved it, every nook and cranny, but now, well, it just seemed empty and records could only fill so much space.

He jumped at every echo, at every creak, and had the notion that perhaps men were haunted rather than places, but it didn’t matter. He knew he had to get out, to do something, that if he continued down the path he was taking he’d just end up like his parents and that would be a slap in the face to the hundreds of times he’d climbed out of his window with a backpack to end up at Eddie’s for the night. Eddie lived the closest and was a light sleeper. He always came to the window when Richie tapped at the glass.  
So he’d thrust himself into work (he didn’t need a shrink to know that he was using work as an excuse to repress his emotions), found himself a cozy little apartment, and he’d been fine, fine, fine. He still jumped at every sound, he couldn’t stand the dark, the smell of wetness, but he was FINE. Until the letters came, and then with Eddie’s voice in his head and Myra’s shrieks (Or was it Sonia’s?) he found that he wasn’t so fine at all.

I’m tapping at the glass now, Eds. Where are you?  
_  
Don’t call me Eds. You know I…_

Richie shook his head violently to clear away the memory and let the letter fall to the table but he still felt the ghost of a hand at his cheek and the words still stared up at him from the page.

“I know you hated it,” he heard himself say to no one. “That’s why I did it.”

It was shitty, he knew it, and God knew he hated listening to that water cooler ‘she’s so cute when she’s mad’ bullshit, but damn if Eddie hadn’t been adorable when he was pissed. He’d scrunch up his nose and his big old bambi eyes would widen and his little voice went from sweet to venomous in two seconds flat and Richie hadn’t realized it back then, but he’d adored that.

He wondered if Eddie had ever known that and had the sinking feeling that he probably didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the page, to Eddie, to no one at all, “I’m sorry that I left you there.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking about Derry or about the sewer, or both, but he felt cold and heavy and before he realized it the phone was in his hand.

“Steve. Yeah, it’s Richie. Yeah, I know it’s late. I’m sorry. Listen, I need to take a powder.”

“Another?!” Steve bellows, furious, and Richie can’t blame him because the last time he took a powder he was gone for a month. He wondered what Steve would say if he knew that the last time Richie took a powder two men had lost their lives. He didn’t tell him, he just listened to Steve bitch and when he’s done, he apologized once more and hung up the phone. Steve quickly rings back, clearly still angry but Richie let it go to the machine.  
_  
You know I…_

You what? Richie found himself looking at the stack of letters on the table, Eddie’s last words echoing through his mind as he imagined what he might have said, by the look on Eddie’s face as he faded away, like it was on the tip of his tongue.

He thought about devouring the letters one by one, as if Eddie’s last thought would be in there somewhere, but he was afraid. When he was done, then what? Then Eddie was gone from him again and he had to face the dark alone again.

You think you’ve got to face the dark, buddy? His own voice sneered in his mind, Imagine how Eddie feels…

No, he told himself, shaking his head again. Not tonight.  
With one last glimpse to the letters, to what remained of Eddie, Eddie who had now been lost to him twice, he turned and went to bed.

Oddly enough, he dreamed of Stan.

**Author's Note:**

> um. idk man.


End file.
